


Nosferatu

by autiotalo (orphan_account)



Category: Die Ärzte
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-28
Updated: 2010-09-28
Packaged: 2017-10-12 06:25:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/121883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/autiotalo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bela found his voice. "You look like Albin Grau's wet dream."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nosferatu

"This is all your fault, you know."

Bela sat on a swivel chair in Farin's dressing room, swinging back and forth as he leafed through the pages of a magazine on hairstyles. He hoped to God that it belonged to the make-up artist and not to Farin. He paused to admire one of the models, and then progressed to an article on blunt cuts. Idly he wondered if he could get away with more layers in his hair.

"Really," he said, looking from the magazine to his reflection and then measuring a strand of hair from his fringe with his fingers.

"Yes! What has Nosferatu got to do with The Smiths, for fuck's sake? It's hardly relevant. I should have made a video with, I don't know, hanging DJs in Carlisle, Dublin, Dundee, Humberside... That would have been topical, at least. But vampires? That's your fault. Morbid. Moribund, too. This is a serious song, maybe, and I look like a – a skinned hare… Are you even listening to me?"

"His master's disembodied voice," Bela said, and closed the magazine. "Yes, master. I am listening, master."

"Shut up. And I'm not disembodied."

Bela grinned. It was very easy to irritate Farin, and pretending to be subservient was by far the quickest method. "I can't see you, dumbass. Stop messing with your hair and let me look."

"It's not my hair, it's these nails," Farin grumbled. "I want your professional opinion, yes? Not your personal opinion. And don't laugh."

"My professional opinion as what? I'm not a professional vampire, Jan."

"No, but you're a typecast vampire." Some shuffling, and then around the corner of the screen at the other end of the room there came a pale, elegant hand with inch-and-a-half nails curving like claws.

Bela sat up straight. "Fuck, man. Hope you don't have to play guitar in this video. Those nails would need stunt doubles."

The fingers tapped impatiently, the nails scraping on the wooden screen. Bela shivered and shut up.

Farin emerged to stand, self-conscious, a good distance from Bela, with one hand plucking at the nap of his black velvet frockcoat. He only stopped when he realised that the white greasepaint was transferring itself in smudges from his fingers onto the coat. Instead, he fiddled with the buttons, leaving tiny dulled patches where he touched them.

The magazine slid from Bela's lap. He stared, utterly transfixed, at the creature before him. White, white skin and heavy black eye make-up, touches of grey shadow blended beneath the cheekbones and in the hollows of the temples, pale grey lips. Pointed ears like a bat's - not shapely like elf-ears, but still delicate. And the fangs - a rodent's teeth, not the wickedly sharp canine incisors that all other vampires wore – the fangs pressed down enough to dent the lower lip.

He didn't think he'd ever seen Farin look quite so fragile, nor so uncertain.

An uncertainty that was rapidly turning into panic, Bela realised with a start. Farin came a little closer, with small, measured steps unlike his usual loping gait, and then he stopped and lifted his hands, pleading.

Bela found his voice. "You look like Albin Grau's wet dream."

"Is that a compliment?"

"You look like one of _my_ wet dreams."

Farin rolled his eyes. With the make-up on, it looked far more dramatic than it usually did. "Great. I feel so much better." He tried to put his hands in his pockets, remembered that he didn't have any, and so settled for patting his slicked-back hair. "My God," he said, awed. "It doesn't move."

"It suits you." Bela swung on the chair. "You look fantastic. Really."

"Was that why you suggested this? Just so I could look like your wet dream? Nosferatu wasn't exactly a sexy vampire. I look like a Victorian undertaker with a bad case of consumption. It's not sexy. You find this sexy? I -"

"Jan. Shut up." Bela leaned back and folded his arms, pleased with himself. "I knew you'd look good as Nosferatu. He was possibly the only vampire who dragged around the burden of immortality and blood-drinking and bat-transforming like he hated it. Murnau wanted to show that it was a curse, not some sort of lifestyle to be envied. Nosferatu hated what he was."

Farin tilted his head, absorbing this; then said lightly, "You're such a geek."

"No, I just know my vampires. Fuck, I love those fangs. They're…"

"Irritating to wear," Farin said. "I can't take this seriously. I'll laugh. I'm supposed to look scary. How the hell do you do it?"

"Huh?" Bela was still admiring him. "Oh, I, uh, I think of food."

"Food." Farin wrinkled his nose. "Somehow, I don't think aubergine au gratin will remain my focus for more than three seconds."

Bela kicked the magazine out of his way. "It's not the food that's important. It's intention. So you just imagine that nothing is going to stand between you and your tofu, or rabbit food, or whatever. You can do intense."

Farin polished his nails against his coat. "Not dressed like this, I can't."

"Shit, you're so paranoid." Bela stood up and went to face him. "Look. Try it. Pretend I'm tofu. Come and get me. And be intense about it."

"You're not tofu. You're way past your sell-by date," Farin said, wriggling his shoulders within the confines of the frockcoat.

Bela snorted. "And you think you're so hot? Fuck you. Come on, before you make this the longest video-shoot in history."

Farin shuffled a moment longer, and then composed himself, his expression slipping into a disturbing blankness, as if all life had just been snatched from him. Bela recoiled automatically. He'd seen that look before, and while he had to acknowledge that it was effective, he wished that Farin wouldn't use it. In turns heart-breaking and chilling, it was the look of a man so inured to life that death had become sweetly ordinary.

Bela thought that, had he not known it was all too real, he might be jealous of the absolute deadness in Farin's eyes. Instead he backed away, and watched, envious, at the way Farin lifted his chin. The light behind him sharpened the shadows of his face and shone, glittering, painful, from his severely styled hair.

"That's good," Bela said, holding up a hand to stop the advance.

Something flared in the darkness of Farin's eyes.

"Enough. I said: you can stop now." Bela was brought up sharp, backed against the wall. An almost laughable situation, except that Farin wasn't laughing, or even smiling. There was no trace of humour on his pale face, only an expression of calculated hauteur.

"Okay, I'm not being tofu any more," Bela said, and tried to slide sideways. He froze where he was when Farin reached out his left arm, his fingers lifting one at a time so that the curved nails flickered, fragile and dangerous. Bela watched, hypnotised, as Farin set the palm of his hand flat on the wall, the nails catching the ruffles of Bela's hair before scraping into silence.

Farin came closer. Too close, as close as they could be without fully touching. He stood motionless for a moment, and then slowly lowered his head, and waited.

Bela stared at him. Farin's eyes were downcast; his lips were parted, the tips of the little white fangs tantalising. Bela moved forwards, wondering if his action would startle Farin into a retreat. It didn't. Was this submission or permission? Bela wondered. He curled his hand around Farin's outstretched arm and shifted a little nearer, until he could hear Farin's breath, could feel it against his lips.

He couldn't kiss him – it would ruin the make-up. Bela whispered, "Jan?" in a voice that was little more than a squeak; and Farin tilted his head slightly in response. The fangs glinted. Bela got as close as he dared, touching only by breath and feeling the heat rise from their skin. His body yearned: desperate for the taste of something offered freely, yet denied by restraint, Bela licked at one of the little fangs.

Farin trembled, his lips parting further. Bela slid his hand along Farin's arm to the shoulder and hooked around it, bringing him dizzyingly close. They shared the same air, breathing in, breathing out; and still Bela licked the fangs, tracing the curves and testing the sharpened tips with his tongue. It was alien; it was exciting. He'd wanted to be a vampire since he was a child, but had given only passing thought to what it would be like to receive a vampire's kiss. But now…

"Bite me," he said, breathless.

Farin dipped his head lower. Bela felt the scratch of long fingernails over the collar of his jacket and so he shrugged out of it, exposing the side of his neck. He felt his pulse beating wildly and wondered, panicked, if this was really such a good idea.

He forgot his anxiety when Farin moved over him and explored his flesh with his tongue as if he would decide by taste alone where to sink his fangs. Bela shivered as Farin slid tiny dancing caresses from his collarbone to his jaw, and then he grabbed harder at Farin's shoulders when he felt a fang nip at his ear and then catch at his earrings. He felt his knees buckle and took a gasping breath, painfully aroused.

Farin's silken cravat rustled as he moved. He smelled of greasepaint and new velvet. Bela grabbed at his free hand, almost recoiling at the smooth, alien feel of the paint over the skin, and then he forced it lower.

"God, Jan. Please."

Farin's nails clicked. Bela struggled with the zipper on his trousers and nearly cried out with relief when his cock sprang free. Farin's hand closed around it, careful of the edges of his nails. The greasepaint slid between them, sticky and resistant, forcing Farin to work for Bela's pleasure.

In lazy counterpoint to his hand, Farin nuzzled at the sweep of Bela's neck: first breath; then the tip of his nose, and then his lips. Bela felt the smudge of the make-up dragged over his skin and then the warm, wet lap of Farin's tongue cleaning away the paint. He slumped back against the wall, clinging to the frockcoat and twined so tight that his head rested on Farin's arm. Everything was a blur of sensation: the velvet beneath his grasping hand, the feel of Farin's tongue probing at his jugular, the claws curved around his cock, and the explosive heat that built between them.

Farin licked at one patch of skin again and again, as if he could anaesthetise it with saliva. Bela tensed, expecting pain, determined not to make a sound; but when it came, the bite was gentle, tentative: bruising but not breaking the flesh. Bela held his breath, thrusting hard into Farin's hand as he urged him on, begged him to bite again.

Again. And again. Farin's fangs were not sharp enough to penetrate, and so the bruise grew deeper, washed each time with saliva and kisses, until Farin took a nip of skin and shook his head violently.

Bela yelped as he felt the trickle of blood ease from the tiny wound. He felt Farin lick at it curiously before he settled to feed with a gentle nudge and suck at the damaged skin. So much pain: so much pleasure. Bela surrendered as it rushed him, headier than any drug and more drowning-sweet than love. He moaned, helpless, feeling Farin's arm go around him as he collapsed into the smallest, most gratifying death of all.

They remained motionless for a moment, and then Farin pulled away. Still silent, he left Bela by the wall and wiped his hand on a paper towel before he looked in the mirror to see the extent of the ruin of his make-up.

Bela, still shaken by the experience, looked down cautiously to see white paint smeared over the front of his trousers. He grimaced at the mess, and tucked himself back in. "I'll just…" he said pointlessly, gesturing towards the bathroom. There was no reply, so he added, "Yeah. Okay, then," more to break the silence than for any other reason.

When he came back out, he wandered over to where Farin stood lost and withdrawn. Bela reached out, wanting to bridge the void, but was pushed away.

Farin could never cope with tenderness, afterwards. He sat in the chair and stared at the mirror as if he wished that he really were the Nosferatu, with no reflection to judge him. His shoulders stiffened in rejection as Bela came closer, and then he looked down at his hands in his lap. The nails gleamed, long and sharp. Farin flicked his right forefinger across the edges of the nails on his left hand, one at a time, slowly; and then faster and faster.

"Don't do that," Bela said, softly.

Farin stopped; his shoulders slumped, defeated.

"I'm sorry about your make-up."

Farin refused to meet his gaze in the mirror. "It's only paint."

"Yeah. Well." Bela pushed the back of the chair so that it began to move, but Farin put both hands on the table in front of him, refusing to turn around.

"I think you should go."

Bela stared at their reflection and willed Farin to look at him, if only for a moment. It didn't work. Farin kept his head down, his mouth set and his eyebrows drawn into a deep frown, his whole body almost vibrating with tension.

"Sure. What the fuck." Bela forced himself to shrug, and then walked away. He pulled open the door and paused, swinging back to have the last word: "You know what? You'll make a great vampire. Absolutely fucking heartless."


End file.
